The Hydra was my pet feature, a monster I wanted in from the start. We designed whole areas of the game around it. I personally spent about six months on and off getting all the movement algorithms and physics for it in a working state. Everyone was pretty skeptical it was even possible when I started, so I kept it pretty low profile, but once I got some early rough AI drafts up and running, pepole would sneak one into a map, check it out, get all excited, and start pushing me to hurry up and finish it. However, the closer it got to being done, the more its fatal flaw was becoming clear: it was amazingly cool to watch it fight other characters, but it was zero fun to play against in first person. When it attached others, as the player you could see this great big glowing giant worm snaking through the map, knocking stuff over and putting on a great show, but when it attacked you, you'd just see this non-descript blob doing something vague, then you'd be dead. Cutting it was presonally very painful, but I had to do it, when a design just isn't working, it just isn't working. I'd still like to see this in the Half-Life universe somewhere, maybe rethink its AI more along the lines of an Antlion
- Ken Birdwell